Home is Where He Is
by Lady Cailan
Summary: One-shot submitted for the "A New Home" challenge at Cheeky Monkeys.  Once a dwarf leaves Orzammar, where is home?


_This is a one-shot s__ubmitted for the "A New Home" challenge for Alisgal at Cheeky Monkeys. _

_LCailan_

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><p><strong>Home is Where He Is<strong>

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><p><em>If Oghren is successful with Felsi he will find her again and presumably marry her and have a child (Which he names after the Warden). He will also become a Dwarven General in the human armies.- <em>Dragon Age Wiki

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><p><strong><em>Where thou art - that - is Home. ~Emily Dickinson<em>**

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><p>She's never had a home, she realizes.<p>

She supposes being born somewhere doesn't necessarily mean its home, and especially after her mother flees to the surface. She never knows why. All she knows is that after, well, is it really her sodding fault her mother left Orzammar? Is she lost to the Stone simply because of her mother's decisions?

Sodding, stupid dwarven propriety!

_Cloudgazer, that one is!_

_Stupid topsider!_

_Sodding skyers should never be welcome back in Orzammar._

So her mother has abandoned her sodding caste? Does it really matter?

No, Orzammar turns out to be just her place of birth, but holds nothing else, no fond memories, until _him._

She isn't sure what it is about him, to be honest. He's a warrior, he's a drinker, and he's married to the Paragon. She thinks, yes, maybe that's it. But there's more to him. He's funny, and he's kind under a rough, drunken exterior. In some ways, she thinks that he's rather like she is. Born into a life that doesn't feel quite right, and doesn't feel like home.

Sodding Orzammar castes.

They have both find themselves stripped of their names, branded as outsiders. The home they find is in each other's arms.

She knows though, that something like that can't last. And it doesn't. She leaves him soon enough, for it's too much for her. The yelling, the anger, the drinking, the obsession with his Paragon.

She decides it's not worth it, and lets him have her.

Stupid, sodding Paragon.

And he's stupid too, she decides, if he believes that his home is with a woman who doesn't love him.

And so she leaves, and she steps blinking, into the light.

Where is home now, she wonders? But such a question is easily answered, for she knows no one but her mother, and so her destination is set. The new world is strange, she knows. There's too much green, too much light, and way too much blasted sky. She's not sure where to look first, and maybe it's better not to look at all, because it scares her like she's never been scared before.

And she doesn't get sodding scared.

Everything here is new and different, and maybe that's why she decides somewhere along her journey that this might be home, now.

But it's not. It's home because her mother is there, nagging her and complaining to her, and reminiscing about home in Orzammar. She realizes she's confused, because why would anyone leave a place they called home? She is forced to stay, because she can't return to Orzammar.

Not like she sodding wants to, anyway.

So, she stays. She tries to make her mother's hovel a home. She works at a little tavern, right off the shores of Lake Callenhad. She tries to remember it could be worse, she could still be in Orzammar wondering what had happened to her life, and watching _him_ obsess over another woman.

No, she'd rather hump a nug, thank you very much.

Sometimes, at night, she stares out of the dirty window of her mother's hovel at the glittering, diamond like surface of the lake, and she ponders the moon. She likes the moon. There's nothing like it anywhere else, she decides.

Still, this is not home. And she wonders if she'll ever have one again. In the end, what is a surfacer to do but accept the fate she has chosen? In the end, she decides that if home is something she can't find, she'll sodding make do with what she can.

And then it's his voice again, reminding her that when things seem the bleakest, sometimes that's when fate throws you a sodding curveball.

"Are you sure you're not a baker? 'Cause you've got a sodding nice set of buns."

It's strange. She wants to hate him, and maybe in some ways, she always will. But he was her first love, and his arms, the only place she has ever called home.

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><p>She watches him, as he watches the sunset fall behind the Tower in the far distance. The lake is resplendent in oranges and pinks reflected off of its rippled surface.<p>

Behind them, is the house. Three rooms, five windows, a kitchen and a small porch that overlooks the hillside and the lake beyond.

She breathes in the scent of tar and wood, the newness of the house, of her new life. For a few moments, there is nothing but the two of them in their own thoughts, and then the silence is broken by a lusty cry from within.

She hurries into the house – home, it's a sodding home – and she cradles the little boy, and brings him outside, handing him to his father. Now, she is at peace. Now, she finds understanding, even in the silence. The restlessness is gone, and she wants to go no further.

"Welcome home, Alim," he says as the little boy pulls on his reddish-orange beard.

She smiles, kissing her son's tiny hand. He turns to look at her too, his brown eyes dancing with unspoken happiness.

"Welcome home, my Felsi."

To this, she smiles.

She is home, she knows. For home is where love is. Home is where peace is. For her, home is where she finds him.

~Fin~


End file.
